A Test of Wills
by KaKiara
Summary: In which Sakura is called from her office at an ungodly hour in the morning and is thrown into a situation she could never have imagined - a situation that rewrites her understanding of loyalty, sacrifice, Anbu, and her ex-sensei. Desk jobs aren't what they used to be.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto, or any of the characters therein. I do not make any money from writing fanfiction.

* * *

Author's Note:

Boom. New story. Yeah, I'm surprised too.

* * *

It was a beautiful night. A full moon cast liquid silver over the gardens and a soft breeze gently stirred flower petals, filling the air with their delicate sent. The summer night was cool, calm, and tranquil.

And Sakura was fucking bored.

With a deep snort of disgust Sakura slammed her window shut and turned to face her dingy little office. How dare everything look so perfect when she was stuck working? Was it too much to ask for a nice long bought of miserable rain? She flopped down into her patched-up swivel chair and moodily started playing with a pen.

It wasn't that Sakura didn't like her job; quite the opposite was true. Healing was her calling and she knew it. It was what had spurned her to become a better ninja and to be not just able to pull her own weight, but a serious mother-fucking asset to any team she was placed on. Not that she had a permanent team, what with Sasuke still not ready to return to the village after his brother's death and Naruto off training with Killer Bee. But her current duties as a head of the emergency ward came with a shit-ton of paper work and some really god-awful hours.

She looked over at her desk. The piles of paperwork loomed higher than she could ever remember them looming. Seriously, were scrolls able to breed?

She stared down the mountains of paperwork gloomily. This wasn't what she was meant for. She had taken the post for the experience – and an _experience_ it certainly had been – but these days for every hour she spent doing hands-on healing, she spent four doing paperwork and wading though the bureaucratic mess that was Konoha's medical system.

She rubbed her tired eyes and glanced at the clock. Three-fifteen in the morning. She still had another four hours and forty-five minutes to go until she could go home and collapse into bed.

Resigning herself to another lonely night of boredom, Sakura slumped forwards and opened the first scroll on the pile. The numbers on the clock slowly changed as the room's lonely light burned on. Hers was the only window illuminated on that floor of the hospital wing.

Around two tedious hours later Sakura's concentration was broken by the loud ring of her telephone. That was unusual. Not unheard of, mind you, but unusual. Sometimes rookie medics hailed her down so she could find the paperwork that they had lost, or sign a form that could have been slipped into her mailbox or something else that could definitely have waited until her rounds the next day.

With a long suffering sigh Sakura dropped her pen and picked up the receiver.

"Hel –"

"Sakura-senpai!" a young voice wailed out of the earpiece in near hysterics. A tumultuous bumble of people running about and panicked voices filled the background. Cringing, Sakura moved the receiver a little farther away from her ear, but the blind panic in the voice at the other end made her answer sharply.

"What is it?"

"Men came in. It's, it's... They're wearing m–"

"Where are you?" she cut in sharply.

"Ward four"

"I'll be right down." Her heart was decided to do double-time. Had there been any teams scheduled back tonight? "Keep everyone calm and follow procedure."

There was no answer.

"Hello?" She waited a heartbeat. "Did you hear me?"

A different voice answered. This one was calm, male, and deathly quiet.

"Remain where you are."

The receiver clicked and the phone went dead. Sakura was rooted to the spot, the dial tone filling the office. Woah. Jeeze. Stay where she was? Who did that person think he was? Although her position demanded that she work in all four emergency wards, she was assigned to ward four. That was _her_ ward.

Scrambling up, Sakura threw on her white medic's coat with the head medic insignia on the back and raced out the door, not bothering to lock it behind her.

* * *

She had expected to find ward four in chaos. She had expected to find a team (or teams) of injured soldiers bleeding out on the floor, nurses running around barking orders, administering bandages and healing those they could. Failing that, she had expected to have to deal with a gaggle of inexperienced medics who had never seen a brain peeking through a cracked skull or bones protruding out of some poor sod's chest before.

What she didn't expect was to find silence.

The ward was empty. At least it seemed so, so far.

Unnerved, Sakura darted forward, peering into rooms as she went. Emergency surgery? Empty. Waiting room? Empty. Break room? Deserted. Reception desk? Not a soul in sight.

_Where the hell is everyone?_ She wondered. The sound of her shoes on the polished floor filled the room up to the ceiling.

Something was wrong. Something was massively wrong. There was always staff on. The emergency ward never closed, not even on Christmas. Binders were open, charts half filled... Here and there papers were scattered on the floor as if someone as dropped them in surprise and then not bothered to pick them up.

This was crazy. Whatever had happened to the staff, Sakura had to contact someone to get some backup to figure out just what the hell had happened. There had been plenty of people in the room five minutes ago, she was sure of it. She had heard them over the phone.

She spotted a phone on the wall and ran over, slipping a little on some loose papers on the way.

No such luck. The phone was dead; not even a dial tone met her ear. Slamming the phone down in frustration, Sakura turned to stomp away to go get someone herself.

But something made her pause.

One of the papers that she had slipped on had flipped over when she had regained her footing.

There was a dirty boot print on it.

I chill went down Sakura's spine. The ward seemed even quieter than possible. Her little flats weren't that big nor were they dirty. She crept closer, the hairs on the back of her neck standing up in alarm before she even knew why.

The print wasn't from a standard issue Konoha boot.

Mind flying a mile a minute, Sakura made some quick decisions.

Someone (or _someones_ her mind interjected) who were most likely not from Konoha had been in here. There were no other signs of them being there, so they had been careful to leave no trace of their presence lest a casual onlooker pass by and raise an alarm. They had kidnapped (or killed, her mind whispered to her again) the entire medical team that had been on that night. True, it had been a skeletal staff, but the trespassers had to have been incredibly skilled to have neutralized all the medics before _even one_ had let off a jutsu in self-defence.

Questions such as why infiltrate a hospital ward? and had other areas of the village been infiltrated? raced through her mind before one thought overwhelmed them all.

She had slammed that receiver down pretty damn hard.

Five minutes, now probably six or seven, wasn't that long. If there was someone left in the ward, they definitely would have heard her by now. She had to get out now if she was going to get out all.

She mentally flicked through her options. It would be unwise to go back the way she came in case someone had been following her since they heard her come in. She would walk right into them. To get out the other exit she would have to walk through the entire ward, giving someone ample opportunity to attack or ambush her. She was confident in her combat skills, but she didn't want to take on the enemy not knowing how many there were or how they had managed to defeat the entire medical team and move them to wherever they were. That left the exit into the hospital greenhouse. It wasn't far, and if she could get there she could make it to the Hokage Tower and find somebody to raise an alarm... after she had lined her pockets with a few fresh poisons in case anywhere else in village had been attacked, that is.

Right, it was time to get down to business. She had a medical team relying on her and a duty to perform. A secret thrill ran though her stomach; it had been too long since she had been on a mission that posed any real danger.

She quickly masked her chakra to make her harder to follow. Now whoever was following her would know that she knew she was being followed, but it still beat being a sitting duck. She siphoned off a bit more chakra to create a cushion of invisible resistance under her feat. The cushion would muffle all noise that her feet made, a trick she learned from Tsunade. Only people with uncanny chakra control could use this technique flawlessly while maintaining a chakra mask. Her tail would have a hard time pursuing her as she sprinted along without letting his chakra mask slip or making some noise. She, however, could sprint along like a gazelle while making as much noise as an owl gliding through the night.

Which she promptly did.

Right. Left. Peek around both corners. Straight. The exit was just up the next hallway. Sakura had taken two steps down the hall when the tinkle of a glass vial breaking froze every muscle in her body. It had come from up ahead. Two doors down, the medical storage room was open just a crack. She heard nothing else.

Did she dare risk searching the room with her chakra to figure out how many people were in there? Doing so while keeping her chakra masked and maintaining the cushion under her feet was within her ability, but it still came with risks. If one of the ninjas in the room was a sensory type, even if her chakra was masked there was a possibility he could be tipped off to her presence if her chakra touched him at this close of range. She could just run past the door. But what if they got away? They would have next to no intelligence on these people. The whole situation was so bizarre. What could they possibly want in the supply room anyway? This can't have been why they broke in.

She would risk it. She had to. With extreme caution she sent a tendril of chakra forward.

There were two people in the room and they were scurrying around a_ lot_. What the heck were they trying to find? Intrigued, Sakura leaned closer to the wall and scooted up the hallway, intent on overhearing them. Just as she drew level with the door, her eyes flew wide and her heart gave a painful pump as the edge of her chakra flared, alerting her to a masked presence behind her far too late.

Her muscles tensed as a needle went into the back of her neck and everything went black.

One thing was for certain; her paperwork wasn't going to get done tonight.

* * *

Rewind?... I mean Review?

They make me happy.


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto, or any of the characters therein. I do not make any money from writing fanfiction.

* * *

Sakura came to like bear woken up from hibernation: groggily and confused. Everything was fuzzy and two blobs of white kept dancing in front of her eyes. Her ears and mouth felt like they were stuffed with cotton wads. Groaning, she shut her eyes and decided to go back to sleep but apparently someone had other plans; a series of quick slaps to her face sent her brain reeling from the overload of sensations. Her eyes cracked open enough to for her to realize she was in a painfully bright room. Her hearing was starting to improve; urgent and angry whispers and mutterings hovered above her.

"Haruno! This is an order, wake up!"

Fuckface. Couldn't he tell she was floating on a wave of sedatives? Way easier said than done.

A calmer voice tried his version.

"Sakura-san, wake up. Come on, eyes open."

He could at least say please, Sakura thought as she struggled to do so, still not quite sure what was going on and where she was.

The white blobs swam into focus.

Masks. White masks. White-masks-white-rooms-hospital-empty-gone-run-in filtrators-_quick-behind-you..._

Sakura bucked and yanked against the wires that were wrapped around her body.

"Stop fidgeting." Like hell. She needed her chakra. She could just about feel it, but she needed to get rid of the poison that was polluting her chakra network before she would have enough control to snap her restraints.

A flurry of activity in the background distracted her captors. They turned away, obviously believing she wasn't capable of escaping her bonds; for now, they were right. Sakura took the opportunity to gather the small amount of chakra her fuzzy brain could control and began siphoning the tranquiliser out of her blood and body through her sweat glands. Progress started slowly, but the more chemicals she expunged, the more chakra she was able to use.

She was finishing up when her captors, plus a new buddy, returned.

"Wake her up. Now." Another jackass. Did he know his soulmate was standing beside him? Unlike his words, his voice was strangely smooth. He could have been one hell of a singer.

Two hands roughly grabbed her shoulders to shake her. Fuckface was back. Sakura tried really – like _really_ – hard not to smile when he collapsed to the floor, down for the count and ready to spent two weeks in rehabilitation waiting for his overloaded chakra network to restabilize. Do no harm? Not to her patients.

There was no use pretending she wasn't awake now. With one more burst of chakra she snapped her bonds and jumped-rolled to the side ending in a defensive stance. The remaining two ninja didn't move. In fact, other than the two masked faces staring at her no one seemed perturbed that an enemy ninja had just broken her bonds and was loose, irate, and ready to attack.

Just what was going on here? Now that she finally had a clear head, Sakura looked around. And then looked around again when it was clear nobody was about to attack her.

There were no windows. No discernible doors. So much for her escape plan. The room had the unmistakable chill of being underground and clearly no one had tried to cheer the place up at all. She was in what looked like a second rate medical facility, judging by the white wash walls, smell of bleach, and – her heart throbbed in relief – her medical team rushing about or gathered in pairs around bleeding bodies, watched by silent masked sentinels.

Why they were helping the... _ah-fuck_.

Harsh florescent lighting had a way of draining all colour from things, but even it couldn't drain away the red, purple, and green stripes and swirls on the masks in front of her.

Anbu.

She had been kidnapped by Anbu.

And fuck her to Tuesday, she had taken one of them down.

Guiltily, she glanced at the body crumpled on the ground. The tall ninja with the smooth voice addressed her as if she hadn't just taken out one of his fellow operatives.

"Stand up and assist the medical team. Any supplies you may need are here." Well he certainly didn't waste time. "And," he added, in a conversational tone, indicating towards the incapacitated agent, "that _better_ be reversible." Trepidation pooled in the bottom of her stomach in spite of herself.

She got to her feet and edged around the body to join the others. So Konoha hadn't been invaded. Still, tonight had been one of the weirdest nights of her life and she had a feeling things were going to get weirder from here on out.

'Regardless,' she thought, as she entered the bumbling chaos of shouting voices and scurrying medics, 'this, she knew how to handle.'

Her medics called to her in relief as she took control of the room, defaulting back to her thorough training. Nevertheless, there was something ridiculous about ANBU raiding their own hospital and kidnapping staff to deal with their medical emergencies. She let out a sigh, rolled up her sleeves and got to work.

* * *

What she guessed to be four or five hours later, she found herself elbow deep in some woman's intestines fishing out shrapnel and thinking about breakfast.

She was tired.

She was exhausted.

_And_ she was starving.

And those stupid moronic statues just stood there, only moving when she or her medics got too close to one of the patient's precious masks.

"Excuse me," she said, trying to keep her tone light, "but in case you didn't notice, _sweetie_, I'm holding a very sharp scalpel in my hand. Now I know you're scared for your friend, but you're going to have to let go of my shoulder in case you make my hand slip when I'm operating. We don't want that, now do we?"

"Leave the mask."

_Fucking-ungrateful-moron._

"I'm operating here; I need to check her vitals and I need access to her face. Non-negotiable."

He didn't move his hand.

"Non-negotiable, darling. Move your hand or I break it."

He started to grip to shoulder more tightly but abruptly let go and glided back to his post on the wall at some invisible signal.

Better. She hooked her fingertips under the mask and pulled up.

Anko had a steady heartbeat, if a bit weak from blood loss. Satisfied, Sakura removed the last pieces of shrapnel and put down her scalpel.

"Mizuki-san, help me out here will you?" she muttered, ready to start healing together the torn flesh. No one answered her.

"Miz...? Eh?" She looked up and was surprised to find she was the only medic in the room. Many of the other medics had hit their limit a while ago. Out of the corner of her eye she had noticed them moving the stabilised patients into a side room whose door had materialised in the wall while she had continued working. The last time she had glanced up, there had been at least four other medics in the room with her. Apparently they, and their patients, had disappeared without as much as a rustle. Now her company was half a dozen bloody shadows on the floor and the same number of cloaked figures stationed against the walls.

And they were all starring at her. Freaking eerie.

Mildly disturbed, Sakura bent over her last patient, unwilling to take her eyes off of the empty faces watching her but intent on finishing her work.

Her fingers flowed through the correct seals and slowly Anko's body began to heal.

* * *

"Are you finished?" Mr Smooth was behind her.

"More or less." Sakura replied, checking Anko's vitals one last time, "The shrapnel is out. She was quite lucky that it didn't hit her any higher – "

"Then you are done here."

" – otherwise it could have pierced her lungs and she would have drowned in her own blood – "

"Join your colleagues."

" – that aside, I'm going to start her on antibiotics in case of infection and she'll need a least a week of bed-rest – "

His muddy boots stopped in front of her but she paid him to attention.

" – Medical ninjutsu isn't perfect; her new muscle and flesh is still sensitive and –"

"That will be enough. Your involvement is finish–"

"I'm sorry, who's the medic here?" Sakura wasn't particularly short but when she stood up the top of her head barely came to the centre of Mr Smooth's broad chest. All the same, she made an impressive figure. Even with her cotton candy pink hair.

Gore-streaked hands planted on her hips, purple bags under her glaring eyes, rivulets of blood dripping from her elbows, and dressed in a now filthy head medic's coat, she rounded on him.

"You kidnap me and an entire medical team in the middle of the night, raid one of the hospital's meticulously inventoried supply rooms, which I might add will not go unnoticed, drop us in an embarrassment of a medical facility that doesn't have the capacity and equipment to deal with this kind of situation, and then expect me to waltz out of here at your command?"

"Through the door, Miss Haruno. We can discuss this further through there."

She looked at the doorway. It was flanked by two ANBU operatives. None of the medics that had gone though had come back out. She took a step closer. They were nearly toe to toe.

"What's going to happen next time?" she asked, still not ready to give in. "Are you going to kidnap whoever's on the night shift and hope that they're skilled enough to heal your injured? I don't care what jutsu you use to wipe our memories, or how many times you've managed to pull this off before. You can't keep this up."

Mr Smooth made no answer. She pressed on.

"You need people who can handle this; you need the facilities to handle this. Anbu or not, these are Konoha ninja, and _this_," she gestured to the single sink, disorganized array of stolen medical supplies, and bare, bloody floor around her, "is unacceptable," she hissed.

Mr Smooth seemed to contemplate her angry form for a moment much like how she imagined a lion would stare at a particularly stubborn hyena while deciding whether it was worth his attention. Or maybe it was her imagination; those masks did a pretty damn good job at hiding any expression. She repressed a shiver. It was really cold underground.

Then Mr Smooth did something that defied all of her expectations.

He chuckled. And remove his mask.

Morino Ibiki grinned down at her. His cold hard eyes did not match his laugh.

* * *

_Ho-ly Shit._

It made sense, kind of. The head of the Torture and Interrogation Squad dealt with classified information and secrets on a daily basis. It would have been weird if he _hadn't_ been a part of the village's shadiest secret organization.

"Well Miss Haruno, for a visitor you certainly have a lot to say about your host's accommodations."

"For a host, you sure have a funny way of _inviting_ visitors."

He didn't even bat an eye.

"I'd like to thank you for your professional opinion," there he went with his soothing voice again, "but the treatment of my operatives is a security issue, not a medical one." Wait, _what?_ _Not_ a medical issue? _His_ operatives?

He chuckled at her gobsmacked expression.

"I'm sure you're aware: our job is to ensure the village's security by whatever means necessary as inconspicuously as possible. The hospital is not private. Filling wards would attract attention, attention that we could do without."

For a man who was defending his organization's pitiful medical resources, he looked like he was having an awful amount of fun. Was she missing something here? She had just put some people back together piece by piece. And he had watched her the entire time.

"Oh well _that_ explains everything then. _Obviously_ you can't set up your own separate medical facility with _your own staff_ so you don't have to kidnap the hospital's." She knew she was treading on dangerous ground. Mouthing off to one's superiors never ended well. Particularly ones that could kill you in over a hundred painfully distinct ways.

He ignored her insolence. "No medic has the security clearance to work here."

Eh?

He crossed his arms over his broad chest. "How long have you been a medic?"

"Going on nine years now," she answered cautiously. What did it matter?

"When you treat your patients, is there any type of wound you can't identity?"

"No... I've seen pretty much everything." And a lot of weird stuff too. There were some places that ninja tools should never be shoved.

"Then if you were to examine one of my agent's bodies, could you tell from their wounds where they had been and what they had been doing?" He egged her on, impatient for the first time.

He had her there. It was true; whether she was healing wounds inflicted by taijutsu, ninjutsu, poison, or weapons, she could identify against what village (and sometimes individual) her patient had been fighting. The five great shinobi nations taught different variations of advanced hand-to-hand combat; their signature jutsus they taught sparingly and only to their own; their poisons were derived from their native species; and she had seen too many modified personal weapons to keep count – Tenten had once gleefully given Sakura a tour of her twenty-something personally designed kunai. Each attack left a different kind of mark on someone's body – marks that a seasoned medic could read like a book.

That wasn't even considering tell-tale signs of regional differences, clan specialities, and kekkei genkai. It was too easy to tell when someone had been sparing a little too hard with a Hyuga or had felt the wrath of an Aburame's insects. From her extensive experience as an on-loan medic in times of peace and from putting Naruto back together (she swore he had fought _everyone_ at least once) she had seen, studied, and healed almost every type of injury possible inflicted by ninja from every walk of life.

Put together the type and severity of your patient's wounds together and _voila_, you knew what village their opponent was from, how strong they were and, depending on the technique, who had trained them.

Now that she thought of it, everyone she had seen tonight had suffered injuries from explosions and burns on their fronts from what was unmistakably fire ninjutsu, quite possibly the Great Dragon Fire Technique judging by the degree of the burns.

Mind you, no one had any injuries on their backs, so they must have been chasing after their target – or more likely targets, plural, judging by how many operatives were sent out.

Their injuries were severe, but none of them had proved to be fatal, so either the Anbu squad was more than a match for their opponents or they were really good at dodging great flaming dragon-shaped fireballs aimed at their persons.

And didn't she overhead Tsunade-sama complaining about a rogue band of ninja with unparalleled skill in crafting exploding weaponry who were drawing disconcertingly close to Fire's border just last week?

Oh.

Security issue.

Yeah, maybe he had a point. Not that she was going to outright admit it.

"You're telling me that there isn't one qualified medic that has the clearance to work with Anbu?"

He didn't comment on the abrupt shift in conversation.

"The only people who are allowed access to Anbu information are members and the Hokage. Not a member, not affiliated; simple as that." Something in his manner reminded her of a very self-satisfied cat, casually batting a mouse between its paws, confident in its fate. Sakura wasn't going to lie to herself; he confused the hell out of her.

She had one last card to lay on the table.

"You can't add a couple trusted medics to that list? Are you really willing to risk everyone's lives to contain a few secrets?"

"They are."

She nearly forgot about their company, they had been so quiet. Around the room, the six masked and cloaked figures inclined their heads a fraction of an inch to her. Konoha's bloodiest organization didn't seem quite as horrible as before. More like a pack of misunderstood, protective, psychotic killers than a terror-inducing mercenary group. It was an improvement, Sakura assured herself.

"One last question."

"Yes?"

"Why bother telling me all of this?"

Ibiki looked like Christmas had come early; the scar bisecting his mouth pulled at his skin rather unpleasantly as he actually _smiled_.

"Why bother indeed?"

She tensed as she felt another needle slide into the back of her neck and, once again, everything went black.

* * *

Author's Notes:

1) Jesus. Writing Ibiki is difficult.

2) Hi there! Hope you enjoyed chapter 2, leave a review if you did! If you didn't, leave one anyway :)


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto, or any of the characters therein. I do not make any money from writing fanfiction.

* * *

Her mouth tasted like week-old road kill.

_Ugh_. Toothbush and toothpaste. Pronto.

Sakura rolled over and promptly fell off her couch, hitting the ground with a thud and a yelp. Mildly dazed, she popped right back up, scrambled to her feet, and swore loudly.

They had broken into her house!

She was in her living room and the morning light was streaming through the windows. Even if they had broken into her house to bring her home, some serious personal boundaries had been broken. She checked the windows and the front door; all were locked.

Showoffs.

In a furious mood, she trod into the bathroom and winced when she saw her face in the mirror. Large purple bags bruised the skin below her eyes and her hair hung lank. Someone had wiped some of the blood off of her arms (how nice of them to wash an unconscious woman, totally not creepy) but they hadn't been too thorough; dried blood rimmed the edges of her nails and stained the skin between her fingers.

Gross. She looked like she had just eaten breakfast, zombie-style.

Her clothes hadn't fared any better. She fingered the flecks of blood that had gotten on her shirt and pants unhappily before stripping them off and tossing them aside. They weren't going to wash out easily. Her head medic's coat was missing, she noticed, but it had been so dirty she would probably have bad to get another one anyway. At least they hadn't tried to change her clothes or anything like that; highly trained shinobi or not, asses would've had to be kicked and balls would've had to be broken.

She washed off her hands, brushed the gross off her teeth and stepped under the spray of the shower. The water swirled murkily down the drain as she scrubbed the blood stains off her skin with a vengeance.

This was ridiculous. All of it. Anbu, the kidnapping, the secrecy... she didn't even understand where _she_ fit in last night's mind-numbing onslaught of events. Everything defied sense.

And to be honest, she was surprised she could remember last night at all. She had a hunch that most people who interacted with Anbu agents didn't get to remember their encounters. They'd be too much of a security risk.

That left her with one conclusion: she had her memories because Ibiki wanted her to have them.

Which made last night even more baffling.

If anything, she was the last person who they should let keep their memories. They had to know that she would kick up a storm about their sorry excuse for a medical facility. And _that_ was a security risk. It didn't make sense.

She rested her forehead against the cool tiles of the wall. The heavy water hammered down on her shoulders; her body was the kind of heavy that demanded she snuggle into the enveloping warmth of her bed. She couldn't have had much sleep.

The image of her marching up to Ibiki and handing him a very long bill for overtime flickered in her imagination. She snorted.

She had a feeling her payment for last night would be something akin to a 'glowing sense of patriotic duty' or something like that. Too bad it didn't pay for her groceries.

Her smile faded. The longer she stood under the shower's spray in the familiarity of her own apartment, the weirder and more distant the last night seemed, like it had happened to someone else.

She needed to put aside time to stop and digest what had happened to her and decide what to do about it. But even more, she needed to talk to somebody about last night. She needed a second opinion from someone she trusted.

Tsunade jumped into her mind instantly. Sakura trusted her mentor implicitly. She had always answered her questions about any aspect of the village's affairs forthright or not answered at all, but she had never outright lied to Sakura.

Her gut twisted a little. Well, that she knew of.

Tsunade had to know about the Black Op's 'medical facility.' Ibiki had admitted the Hokage knew about Anbu's business. But Tsunade had never, not once, even hinted of its existence to Sakura.

There had to be a reason why Tsunade had never told her about it. Under her tutelage, Sakura had worked in every medical building and in nearly every medical room in the village. But she hadn't recognized the room last night. None of the buildings she had worked in had treatment rooms underground.

If she confronted Tsunade would she, like Ibiki, say she didn't have the security clearance?

A glum despondence came to rest in the pit of her stomach. Nearly a decade had passed since she had started her apprenticeship under Tsunade, but maybe there were some heights her mentor didn't think she could reach.

Moron, she chastised herself. Sometimes, when she was feeling down, the little insecure girl that she used to be peeked her unwelcome head up. It happened more often than she liked to admit, but Sakura refused to let her fears of inadequacy have such a tight grip on her anymore. They had never done her any good and other people, namely Naruto, had always had to pick up her slack when she gave in to those feelings. So she had promised herself she would never be a burden again. She shoved the thought aside and refocused

If Tsunade did know about the facility (and how pathetic it was) there must be something that had been holding her back from telling her for the past few years. The same something that would prevent her from answering Sakura's questions now.

Sakura needed someone who regarded their position with enough nonchalance to bend – okay, break – a few rules to help her.

She needed was someone who knew about Anbu. The _real_ Anbu. Inside and out.

She needed someone who could separate myth from fact and tell her what she was actually up against.

She needed someone who knew Ibiki, someone who could decode his weird behaviour for her; someone she could trust, someone who wouldn't lie to her in the name of village security; someone who didn't mind hanging the rules to help out a friend; someone who would listen to her, talk to her, give her advice, someone who –

Dear god... She could have slapped herself but settled for a long-suffering groan.

She was an idiot. And she called Naruto a moron!

Who else had an old sensei that happened to be ex-Anbu?

The realization that she didn't have to take on this mystery alone perked her up more than a whole pot of coffee could have. She rinsed off and five minutes later she pattered into her room feeling slightly more human.

She didn't have a shift today but she wanted to go back to the hospital anyway to check on the staff and hopefully to find some sign that Anbu had been there. There wouldn't really be much point in reporting whatever she could find if Tsunade already knew what they were up to, but she wanted to look around all the same. Curiosity made a good little ninja.

And then she would hunt down her dear old sensei.

She dried her hair, threw on a tan slitted skirt over a pair of snug black shorts and slipped on a loose navy shirt.

With an apartment-shaking _slam_ of the door, she left.

* * *

"G-_aaah_-good morning, Sa–," the young man let out another enormous yawn, "Sakura-senpai."

"Good morning, Kenta-san. Busy night?" She put down her keys on the reception desk of ward four and flipped through a binder, feigning interest.

He shrugged his shoulders and rubbed his eyes. "Not really. Genma's team came back last night but they just needed a patch-up." He stared at her civilian clothes with envy. "Say, aren't you supposed to be off today?"

She smiled at him. He was one of the medics who had been kidnapped last night, but apparently he didn't know it. "Yeah, I just came in to finish up some paper work that I didn't get done last night." A lie. Her paperwork still lay on her desk but didn't she have any intention of finishing it.

He gave her an incredulous look. 'Workaholics,' he thought. He was never going to get promoted with them around.

"Well... have fun with that. My shift's done so I'm going to go home and get some shut-eye."

"Okay, Kenta-san. Make sure you rest up a bit."

Kenta nodded tiredly and waved to her over his shoulder as he pushed through the clinic's doors.

Sakura snapped the binder shut. She hadn't been disappointed. They didn't remember anything.

With a new determination in her stride she marched through the halls to the supply room.

She opened the door to find one of the new interns restocking the cabinets.

"Morning, senpai."

"Oh, sorry Daisuke, are you busy?"

"Sorta, I'm just helping reorganize the supply rooms."

"Reorganize?" They were always meticulously organized.

"Yeah, Hokage's orders after her last inspection. I guess she wants the supplies to be better distributed throughout the hospital wings..." He looked a little confused but cherub-cute boy gave her a timid smile, trying his best to be helpful.

So Tsunade did know. Sakura was willing to bet her next paycheck that a sizable amount of drugs, equipment, and bandages would mysteriously disappear in the bedlam of paperwork necessary for transferring medical supplies. Triumphant, she excused herself from the room with a smile and went to find Kakashi.

* * *

But Kakashi apparently didn't want to be found.

She checked his apartment; no one answered when she rapped on his apartment door. He wasn't ignoring her, his living room was vacant (peering through his blinds while was a necessary invasion of privacy. Besides, it wasn't like she was _going in_. There was a difference, she told her conscience.)

By the time she had checked his usual haunts, the sun was high in the sky and it beat down one her unforgivingly as she made her way through the streets. The temperature was rising to uncomfortable and she was getting irritable.

The shrieks and cheers of Academy kids reached her ears from over the rooftops. Curious, Sakura made her way through the crisscross of streets and over to the school's chain link fence. The kids were in the training area playing what looked like a modified version of 'capture the flag,' complete with rigged waterballoons, ninja wire and... jingling dogs?

Sakura watched as a dog who looked suspiciously like Bisuke, one of Kakashi's ninken, allow a chubby-legged kid within ten feet of him only to pelt off causing the kid to give chase... and promptly trip over some subtly positioned ninja wire.

Smiling happily with his tongue lolling out, Bisuke darted in and grabbed the red bandana hanging out of the kid's pocket and then bounded back into the frenzied mob of screaming children and wagging tails to pick up a new target, the little bells tied to his collar jingling merrily with each step.

Ninken versus kids? The class would need a nap before lunchtime.

She found him sitting on a lone bench where he could keep an eye on the game in comfort while leisurely thumbing through a new catalogue of specialty weapons.

"Come to see the next generation of mighty Leaf-nin?" Kakashi asked, not looking up from his book.

Sakura was about to reply, but she paused.

To their right, Iruka jogged out from around the corner of the Academy building and froze when he saw the whirling mess of hyper kids that sprawled across the grounds. Poor man. He looked like he was ready to pull out his hair. She really didn't envy him. Iruka spotted Kakashi and threw his hands up in the air.

"I asked you to watch over them for twenty minutes!" he wailed. He marched over to meet them but he had to stop every few steps to scoop up delighted grass-stained kids and drop them on their feet.

"Kakashi," she whispered urgently, "can I talk to you? Soon?"

His exposed eye raked over her in concern. She hoped she didn't look as anxious as she felt.

"On the roof in five minutes okay for you?"

Instantly the bubble of pressure in her chest released. He would be able to provide her with some answers. Even if he didn't have all the answered she was looking for, he would help her figure out what to do. He had never been the type to throw in the towel or abandon a teammate when they were in trouble.

Yes she was comparing her personal problems to the battlefield. This Anbu mystery was totally a battle.

She nodded her thanks and quickly left before Iruka could rope her into helping out too. Honestly, he had the patience of a saint to still be doing his same job all these years later. She felt pretty bad for what her year had probably done to him. Although how he had convinced Kakashi of all people to help him out she would really like to know.

Unusually punctual, Kakashi joined her at the edge of the Academy's red tile roof five minutes later and let his legs dangle over the edge beside hers.

For a moment they both enjoyed the breeze that had eluded them down on the ground between the buildings. The air was sweeter above the streets.

Sakura didn't know where to start now that she had found him. Luckily for her, Kakashi was the one to start the conversation.

"If you've jumped on the bandwagon and fallen in love with Genma, you have my blessing."

Sakura burst out laughing. The tension and stress of the last twenty-four hours lifted from her shoulders.

"Well thank you, but I didn't come and find you to get your approval on my love life."

"Oh?" he cocked a thin eyebrow, "With the face you had a minute ago, I thought something momentous must have happened... Naruto hasn't started an international incident, has he?"

"No. Not unless you count choosing to hug the crap out of the Kazekage on a diplomatic mission."

Kakashi chuckled at that.

"God help us when he's Hokage."

They sat for a moment. Sakura enjoyed the breeze beneath her feet and watched two bird chirp as they chased each other in circles.

"So... I was kidnapped last night."

She told him everything that had happened to her, starting with the phone call. Sometimes he would interject to ask a question about a detail she had left out but for the most part he sat silently, watching her hands flutter about as she talked or staring out at the city's horizon, listening intently. She didn't notice how he got quieter and quieter the farther into her story she went.

* * *

"...So?"

"So."

"What do you think?" She was still anxious for answers, but now that she had shared the craziness that had been her night, she felt better. She felt lighter.

He let out a soft but deep sigh and lay back onto the roof.

"Well, you were right," he admitted. "Every medic gets their short term memory altered. You're the only exception I've ever heard of. Congratulations." The last word was uncharacteristically bitter for Kakashi, but she willed her tongue still. The more she let her silences drag, the more he would talk. It was a tactic she had discovered a few years ago and she had used it multiple times to get the damningly reclusive man to open up.

Kakashi must have heard the tone in his voice because he grimaced behind his mask.

"Ibiki wants you to join Anbu," he said in a decidedly more measured and calm voice.

Say _what_?

Sakura turned her head to him sharply, but he didn't meet her gaze, preferring to stare up into the blue, blue sky.

"Oh. Of course. I suppose it would have been silly of me to expect a formal invitation since he's proven himself quite inept at those," she said in an airy voice that utterly belied the feeling of her stomach plunging out from beneath her. Join Anbu? "But how did you get that from... that?"

"You saw Anko's face. Ibiki showed you his face. You can remember them and they need you."

"Need me?" To say she was shocked was one hell of an understatement.

"Need you." he confirmed, eyes still trained on the wispy clouds. "You're a medic, and probably the only one in the village who has a chance at passing an Anbu entrance test."

"Why do they – wait, there's an entrance test?" She'd thought people were just asked to join Anbu.

He sat back up and ran a hand through his hair. He looked... stressed? Sad?

"Very few people can join Anbu," he started haltingly. "Some ninja, though they may be talented, don't fit our psychological requirements. Ibiki arranges for anyone he thinks could be an asset to find their way to him." She snorted, "If they want to join, they take an entrance test so we can gauge their limits, mental and physical, and if we like what we see... you're in," he finished lamely with a vague hand gesture.

"And how do they find your limits?" She would love to see them test Naruto. His very personality defied limits.

This time he looked at her.

"They push you until you break," he said with a dry smile that didn't reach his eyes.

Below them, people milled about in the sunshine in twos and threes down the rows and crosses of neat streets. She didn't think he was kidding. And she hadn't missed the 'our' and 'we' that had slipped into his speech. She'd thought Kakashi hadn't been in Anbu since he was their genin instructor. He had never mentioned it to her before. Just another thing she was wrong about, she guessed.

"And last night was my 'arrangement'?"

"Yep."

"No shortage of subtlety there."

"Nope."

She blew out a long breath, taking a moment to digest everything he had said.

Ibiki wanted her to join Anbu. He'd thrown out his hook by showing her their crap medical facility. And she had gobbled it up when she'd berated him. What had he said? 'No medic has the security clearance to work here'? 'Not a member, not affiliated'? She knew people in Anbu – well, suspected who might be in it – and the thought of them getting substandard medical care and no follow-up treatment plans when they voluntarily took the most dangerous missions set her blood boiling. And the only way for her to help was to join, Ibiki had made that clear.

She knew she should be furious at being so expertly manipulated, but the possibilities were blooming before her eyes. She could design her own clinic. And once she got it established she would push for more medics to be allowed to assist her; Ibiki had another thing coming if he thought she would give up on that. She was going to need _some_ help.

And being off the record, there wouldn't be mountains of paperwork... Oh, it could be her dream job! If she could pass the test.

Talk about hook, line, and sinker.

She was aware of Kakashi watching her, no doubt guessing what was flying through her head.

He had given her the answers she had asked for. The answers had blown her mind, but she had no doubt he had told her the truth. And if he was still a member of Anbu, as she suspected he was, then he had probably ignored all sorts of oaths of secrecy to tell her this much about the organization, but that was so him. He had never let his team down. She knew he thought he had in the past and that he blamed himself for things that quite frankly had been outside of anyone's control, but he had always done everything humanly possible to keep them together and alive. He knew Ibiki, he had decoded his crazy behaviour for her as easily as he might pull a wrapper off a candy. And he had listened to her talk on and on with endless patience...

Why hadn't she appreciated how awesome he was before?

She felt relaxed now. It made sense. It was absurd and preposterous and bat-shit insane and she was aching to get started. She wasn't scared of hard work. Hard work had never done anything but chisel away her insecurities, sculpting her bit by bit into the person she'd longed to be. She was excited. She bubbled inside. She knew what she needed to do... but she wasn't a hundred percent sure how to do it. She was rusty. Not bad, but not her best either. She'd spent too much time sitting in an office to face whatever Ibiki had lined up for her, and failure wasn't an option. She wanted to be better than her best. Tsunade had guided the chisel for her first reformation, so maybe this time...

She pulled up her legs and tucked her ankles under her bum. She sat up straight and looked him right in his weary eye.

"Kakashi, will you help me train for the entrance test?"

He looked away.

"Ask Yamato."

He stood up and left her.

* * *

Author's Notes:

Boom! One super-duper long new chapter! Sorry it took a while, but I've been writing as much as I can!

Please do review; I love to hear all feedback. It makes my day when I know someone has enjoyed my writing, or has read it and has constructive criticism. Thank you for reading!

P.S. I have quite a few other stories featuring Sakura and Kakashi, so if you liked this one, please check them out too :)

Love, KaKiara


	4. Chapter 4

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto, or any of the characters therein. I do not make any money from writing fanfiction.

* * *

The little paper umbrella really made the drink.

Yamato was sitting in the back corner of his secret favourite cafe, relaxing under the steady whirr of the overhead fans. Outside, heat rose from the dirt road in shimmering waves and people dredged on, wanting nothing more than to finish their errands and get out of the infernal heat. It had been quite some time since he had a day off _(thap)_ and had been able to laze around _(thap)_ and just enjoy himself _(thap, thap)_. He'd probably been given the day off (_thap, thap, thap_) because of his rather excellent job on that last rescue mission (_thap, thap, thap, thap_). There hadn't been any casualties and only one episode of – _THAP_!

"YAMATO!" Sakura's sandal smacked the ground beside his table, punctuating her yell. Yamato started, nearly knocking his paper umbrella'd drink over in surprise.

It's too easy to let your guard down in your own village, he thought as he quickly plucked the umbrella out of his drink and hid it away in his pocket out of sight.

"Sakura-san! What a surprise. Um–"

"Will-you-help-me-train-for-the-Anbu-entrance-test ?" she let out in one great rush, clutching the stitch in her side.

Woah. Yamato wasn't one to be caught off guard easily but he hadn't expected her to say _that_. As was natural in an organization of professional liars and interrogators, keeping secrets was a sport and rumours kept score. Everyone knew what everyone was up to. He hadn't checked in at headquarters for two days, but apparently something had happened involving Sakura that he hadn't heard about yet. Had Ibiki got to her?

"Well, I, uh, I don't see why not. But have to admit, Sakura, I'm a little surprised; I thought you would ask Kakashi first..." Not to mention Kakashi was more qualified; the man proctored most of the tests.

"He told me to ask you." Poker face. Arms crossed.

Oh dear.

"Ah, me?" he asked, leaning far back in his seat and plastering what must have been a cheesy grin on his face. He was stalling, but he needed to buy some time to figure out how to handle that bombshell.

The scowling woman plopped down in the seat opposite him and leaned far across the table, shrinking the space between them to a third of what it had been. It had to be unintentional, but Sakura was making him feel like a mouse cornered by a very ferocious feline.

Under her scrutiny, his thoughts went scrambling into overdrive.

Sakura coming to him for help training was unusual, but her answer tipped Yamato off more than a dozen waving flags could.

Something was up with Kakashi. He had been Yamato's captain for years, and he knew Kakashi never refused a genuine request for help, particularly when it came from his genin team. He had a soft spot for them, whether his kids realised it or not.

So Kakashi choosing to defer a chance to instruct Sakura, for whatever reason, struck Yamato as very odd.

What was holding Kakashi back?

Did Kakashi think she didn't have the skills? Sakura was what he would call a 'late bloomer' in that department, but nowadays she could obliterate nearly any jounin in the village and put them back together again to boot. Her generation had spouted some fearsome (and beautiful) kunoichi, but after Tsunade had finished with her, Sakura was definitely the cream of the crop.

Did Kakashi think she lacked the determination to make it through some tough training? One look at the fiery green eyes burning into his, not appreciating the moment he was taking to think, and he abandoned that thought.

Yamato didn't understand. Kakashi must know he would be best suited to training her. And he couldn't think of any reason why Kakashi wouldn't; Sakura was intelligent, quick on her feet, a phenomenal medic, and had an adequate level of mastery of her even her least favourite ninja arts. Not to mention the woman had a spine of steel.

Now that he thought about it, she was the perfect material for Anbu, although a little piece of his heart squeezed painfully when he thought of the warm – if a little brash – young woman being snared by the infectious darkness of –

_Ah_.

He didn't blame the man.

If her furious (and slightly misty?) eyes were any indicator, Sakura had misunderstood. Kakashi hadn't refused to train her because he didn't have the time for her (or for any of the other possible reasons that were undoubtedly swirling around under that crown of pretty hair).

He had said no because he just cared too much.

In Anbu, it was easy to feel like you were drowning in the silence if you didn't have a proper support system.

He himself had relied heavily on the company of the Third Hokage who had always been kind to him and the company of, well, Kakashi. Only a few years older than him, Kakashi was a natural leader and one of the best the five nations had ever seen. Even when Anbu assignments had taken them far from home and things had looked grim, Kakashi had never shucked his professionalism. And when things had gone really bad, he even joked around.

Some people would call those suicidal tendencies, but hey, if it kept everyone else calm and sane Yamato wasn't going to call the rope a noose.

But if Ibiki kept Sakura in Konoha to be an Anbu medic, would she be allowed to talk to anyone other than Ibiki and the Hokage about her job?

His mouth thinned at the thought. It would be a lot of stress. He didn't want Sakura to go through that, but like Kakashi, he wouldn't forbid her from trying if that was what she wanted.

An irritable huff snapped him out of his thoughts.

He realised he had been staring at her for an unseemly amount of time.

"It's no big deal," Sakura broke the silence abruptly, "I mean, he's one of the top ranking shinobi in the village. He's always pretty busy and I did just spring the question on him without any notice, so it's not like he had any time to shift things around in his calendar, not that I would expect him to, I mean, not that I would want him to," she corrected herself, with an all-too carefree flip of her hand.

"Sakura–"

"But, I guess I just did the same thing to you," she rushed on, not letting him get a word in edgewise, "so I guess I... I mean, I should have stopped and thought about why he said no before I came racing over here, but–"

"Sakura!" he interrupted loudly. "It would be my pleasure to help you."

"Oh," she said. "Oh." Her eyes widened in surprise. Poor girl. She looked frazzled. The day hadn't been kind to her.

"It would be my pleasure to help you," he repeated, more calmly, "if Kakashi won't help you train, but first, I think you should understand why he said no."

She opened her mouth but he held up his hand to stem the next flood of rambling.

"And I can guarantee that it wasn't for any of the reasons you just said." She looked surprised and confused but maybe just a little bit hopeful?

She listened intently as he explained how brutally demanding the physical aspects of the test were and how the tests were individually designed to suss out and exploit a person's weaknesses, mental and physical.

But more importantly he stressed how, the moment you returned to the village, you weren't allowed to talk about anything concerning your mission with anyone other than your captain, Ibiki, or the Hokage. Keeping what you saw, heard, and did to yourself was mandatory.

"That can wear on you. Keeping silent takes its toll, and many agents haven't been able to cope. At least not well. Not healthily. Now personally, I don't doubt that you have the capability to make it into the Black Ops," she had a phenomenal smile, "and I hope you'll find a way to cope well, but depending on your skill set, you may be asked to complete some missions that will weigh on your mind for a while. And I think, for Kakashi, seeing that burden on your shoulders, knowing he had helped put it there would be very..." he searched for the right word, "unpleasant for him."

Sakura rested her chin in the palm of one hand, lips twisting as she contemplated his words.

"But if it'll be unpleasant for him, won't it be unpleasant for you too?" she asked, timidly.

"Yes," he answered thoughtfully, "but Kakashi has known you for much longer than I have. And he," _has a serious soft spot for his ex-student and mission partner_, "was entrusted with your wellbeing as your genin instructor, and I think that that is a hard responsibility to just shake off."

"Oh," she said.

Sakura stopped playing with her hands and sat back, exhaling hard. It didn't look like the weight of the world was resting on her shoulders anymore.

"I really appreciate your offer," she said slowly, "but I think..." She looked him dead in the eye, willing him to understand.

It was a damn shame, but it was probably for the best.

"I understand. Let me know how things go."

She smiled and stood up to leave. He jerked up clumsily to stand too. She smiled at his gesture.

"Thank you," she whispered as she moved in to give him a little squeeze. For a moment he felt a little uncomfortable; one of her arms was a little low – it was practically resting on his hip. However any concerns he had disappeared as she moved her arms up to around his neck and gave him a chaste peck on the cheek.

He was pretty sure the sudden flush he felt in his face had nothing to do with the heat.

"Um... No problem, Sakura."

Flashing him a brilliant smile, she turned on her heel and waved to him as she strolled out into the bright sunlight.

It was only as he watched the top of her head disappear into the crowd that the warmth in his stomach melted and a squelchy queasiness took its place; in his analysis of Kakashi, Yamato had shared some information on the Anbu entrance tests with Sakura. Nothing too specific, really, but the general rule of thumb in Anbu for what you could and couldn't share was keep your mouth shut. He hoped that even if someone found out that he had been talking to Sakura about Anbu related topics, he wouldn't get it trouble. After all, Kakashi had to have told her some things too if she knew there was an entrance test.

What made his stomach jittery was not what he'd shared, but how easily it had come pouring out of his mouth. He had divulged classified information like he was commenting on the weather. He needed to be more careful than that, he admonished himself. He had fallen under the influence of Damsel in Distress Syndrome this time, but next time he would have to be more careful if Sakura came to him with her frustrated, misty eyes for help.

Accidentally sharing classified information aside, he supposed he'd done well if she was back to being her usual perky self. And since he was standing – _why had he stood up when she had, anyway?_ – he should probably follow her lead and head out soon too; he had to pick up some groceries. And maybe after he should stop by the jounin headquarters and see if Kakashi was around. The man deserved to be given _some_ warning that Sakura wasn't going to take no for an answer. He downed the last of his drink, nodded to the owner, and made his way onto the street with a small, secretive smile on his lips.

Sakura was _very_ pretty.

He didn't notice the bedraggled little pink umbrella tucked just behind his face protector until he was brushing his teeth that evening. He nearly swallowed his toothbrush.

* * *

Kakashi paced around his apartment, silently cursing Ibiki. It wasn't Ibiki's fault of course; if he were the head of Anbu he would have scooped up a medic as talented as Sakura long before now. But hell, he could have given him some warning for old time's sake.

He reached the end of his sparse living room and turned sharply, stalking the length of the room for the umpteenth time.

Sprawled along the armrest of his preferred couch, Pakkun lifted open one heavy eye and watched him from his favourite position.

"Y'alright, Boss?"

"Yeah, yeah," Kakashi answered absentmindedly, running a hand through his unruly hair.

Pakkun grunted, unconvinced.

Pace, pace, pace, turn.

He felt like a piece of shit.

Had he overreacted?

With the relative peace after the Third Great Shinobi War, Anbu wasn't exactly what it had been in his day. When he enlisted at the age of fifteen the average Anbu life expectancy was three years. Now the life expectancy was catching up to the average jounin's.

Maybe he had overreacted, he admitted grimly to himself.

Pace, pace, pace, turn.

But to protect Konoha's newfound peace sometimes you still had to cross lines and wade into matters it would be best your allies didn't know about. Peace wasn't a stable thing. Everyone's hands were dirty, even if they didn't know to what extent.

Those types of missions weren't as frequent nowadays, or as harsh in their demands, but he hadn't surpassed his life expectancy several times over by being optimistic. You never knew when you would be called on to act for the sake of the good of the village. You always had to be prepared.

So as much as he wanted to, he couldn't disassociate the Anbu he had joined from the organization of today.

And the thought of Sakura following in his footsteps and enlisting made him feel very, very cold.

Pace, pace, pace, _turn_. From various perches around the room eight sets of eyes patiently watched him stride back and forth.

On the other hand – his mind spun with possibilities – there was no chance in hell Ibiki would put Sakura in that kind of danger; he had waited too long to get an adequate medic in his clutches to risk losing her; they all had.

Still wasn't worth it in his opinion.

He had never had someone quite as close to him as Sakura. He'd cared for a lot of the people in his life: his friends, his comrades, his ninken, the old crone in the bookstore who sold him special editions of Icha Icha with a wizened smile and a wink... and his team had wormed their way into his life and become his family, even Sai who hadn't been his student. They were new constants that hadn't left him, at least not yet, and in the past years he had spent more time with Sakura than he had with anyone else. When Tsunade had first paired them up a few years ago as temporary mission partners, he had been pleasantly surprised at how much he enjoyed her company. She hadn't turned into a completely different person than the young genin he had known, but she had mellowed and acquired a dedication to her work that he respected. They'd complemented each other in their mannerisms, fighting styles, and work ethic and subsequently their mission success rate had skyrocketed. Tsunade hadn't let them apart after that and frankly he had hadn't minded one bit. At least she hadn't until she decided the hospital needed Sakura more than the field did.

More than he did...

He squashed that thought.

It was selfish of him to want Sakura to remain as his mission partner when her talents obviously could be put to better use in the hospital. Or Anbu, he made himself think.

A picture in a simple silver frame on his mantelpiece caught his eye and he stopped pacing. Several pairs of eyes perked up from under furry brows, watching his movements. The photo was a fairly recent one of Team Kakashi. It had been given to him by Sakura, Naruto, and Sai as a joint birthday gift, though he suspected it had been Sakura's idea; the frame was the same elegant and unobtrusive design as the ones in her apartment and it had been wrapped impossibly neatly in flowery paper.

Four smiles peered up at him.

Nope, definitely not worth it.

He sighed and flopped backwards onto his couch and stared up at the blank ceiling. Pakkun gently kicked him with his back leg a few times until Kakashi mechanically started rubbing his ears.

"What do I do?" he murmured out loud.

His ninken shared quizzical looks. They understood him well, but they often saw human affairs in black and white.

"Well Boss, ya either help Sakura out or ya don't," Pakkun said patiently.

Well, when he put it like _that_, Kakashi felt like an ass.

Help her out or not? Sakura had to know that she could always come to him for help. He knew some people (mainly Gai) thought he was smooth, but he had always felt clumsy and awkward with the words that mattered. All the same, he thought he had _shown_ if not told his team that they could trust him and could come to him for help.

And she had, hadn't she?

And what had he done?

Shoved aside her request and walked off.

Yeah, great leadership there.

"It's not that simple," he argued softly, fingers still massaging two little triangle ears.

"Would she be useful?"

She would be a godsend. He might as will admit it, she was practically an Anbu wetdream: extensive experience treating kekkei genkai, an education from the Godaime herself, unparalleled chakra control, advanced combat training, and more. She was smart, talented, loyal to the death and completely invaluable if she passed an entrance test. Unlike the regular forces, in Anbu there wasn't a medic per team. There wasn't even one medic for all the Anbu teams. Most ninja who entered the medical profession invested their talents in their field and worked in the hospital. Sure, some shinobi learned medical ninjutsu and still remained active members in the field – Kurenai and Asuma's students Ino Yamanaka and Hinata Hyuga were perfect examples – but their time was split between combat training and medical education. As talented as they were, they hadn't mastered both.

But Sakura had.

"Beyond useful." He was too tired to chuckle at his biggest understatement of the year.

"Could she pass?"

"Absolutely. If she knows what she's up against."

"And would ya test her?"

"No, god no. Someone else would proctor her test. They would have to, if I prep her for it."

"Mmph."

Pakkun didn't seem inclined to add anything more than that and Kakashi was left to agonize over his decision

Did he regret his answer?

He regretted answering so callously. He should have given an explanation. He should have stayed with her a while longer rather than jumping up and running off even though the excitement and yearning and conviction and sparkle in her eyes had crushed him and made him feel helpless.

And the look of hurt and abandon she had given him just before he practically fled...

Thoroughly miserable, he almost missed the soft knock at his front door.

* * *

Sakura was curled up on the other end of his couch, having her hand nosed by a hopeful Shiba. She hadn't been in his apartment for, god, nearly two months now, which seemed ridiculous considering she used to invade his place at least once a week. It didn't feel weird to have her back though. It was as if the last months had just disappeared and she was sitting there ready to discuss their next mission together.

"So... did you ask Yamato?" Kakashi was very aware of how not asleep his dogs were, despite their exaggerated snores. Unless they were all sharing the same dream, their ears shouldn't swivel around to whoever was talking at the same time.

"Yeah, I did."

"Oh." Then was he too late to... what? Apologize? "Is he going to help you train?"

"He said he would if you don't want to." Sakura fiddled with the cup of tea in her hands.

"Oh. That's good."

Silence. Sakura make a fuss of Shiba. The usually taciturn dog practically melted, leaning into her palm and letting his tongue loll out as she stroked his fur.

"He told me a bit more about Anbu," Sakura said conversationally, "you know, what to expect if I pass the entrance test. It didn't sound like most people's dream job," – _no shit_ – "but I'm still going to take the test and join Anbu, no matter what," she said with a dangerous flash in her eyes. "Those people risk everything to protect our village and right now they don't even get decent medical attention. That's something I can provide if I join. I know it's a quick decision, I mean twenty-four hours ago I would have called you crazy if you told me I would be dead set on enlisting," she gave a little laugh, "but that's just the way it turned out. I wouldn't be able to forgive myself if you or Yamato or someone else I know died on duty because they didn't get proper medical treatment straight away."

As much as he didn't want to admit it (he was doing a lot of that today, wasn't he?) that was Sakura, through and through, always worrying about other people and putting others before herself.

"Can I change your mind on this?" he asked seriously. He didn't hold much hope; once Sakura set her mind on something she was as unswayable as Naruto.

"No, Kakashi," she said gently, "But I was hoping you would reconsider, you know, training me."

Was this a chance to make up for how he had reacted earlier? He didn't know whether to be grateful or dismayed.

If she was going to join Anbu whether he liked it or not, surely the least he should do was make sure she didn't rush into the entrance test unprepared. He knew her strengths and weaknesses and the ins and outs of her personality; he knew he was the best one to prepare her for it.

Still, the idea of helping her retracing his path...

But if he said no again...

He made a decision. Damn women and their eyes. If he had to feel awful about his decision, he would rather feel awful some other day than right now with Sakura sitting patiently at the end of his couch and multiple pairs of ears standing at attention, waiting for his response. He had felt like enough of a failure today, thank you very much.

"Okay," he said.

"Yamato said that it would be unpleasant for... eh? Okay?" Sakura seemed dumbfounded.

"Okay, I'll help you train."

Pakkun snorted. Despite whatever the little pug thought, it hadn't been a black and white decision.

There was a clink of ceramic mug touching the coffee table and then two warm arms circled his shoulders and gave a little squeeze.

"Thanks."

He hoped he was making the right decision.

* * *

Author's Notes:

Bet'cha thought this story was turning Yamato/Sakura for a minute there, didn't ya? Nope! I just think a slightly awkward Yamato with a little crush is adorable. I hope you think so too.

Favourite character so far? Favourite line? Anything you didn't like? Leave it in a review please! I read all of them (about a hundred thousand times) any they always inspire me to roll up my sleeves and keep working!

Love, KaKiara.


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